This type of travelling carrier delivery equipment is utilized as means for switching a travelling path of a travelling carrier, means for distributing travelling carriers to a plurality of storage branch lines from a main line as a main travelling path of the travelling carrier and returning the travelling carriers to the main line from storage branch lines, or means for reversing the front and rear direction of a travelling carrier in the middle of a travelling path of the travelling carrier. For example, the travelling carrier delivery equipment described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2001-97546 uses a traverse-type movable rail that transfers a travelling carrier onto a second travelling path for travelling the travelling carrier in reverse from a first travelling path for travelling a carriage-like travelling carrier for carrying an automobile body in a forward direction, and as a delivery unit for transferring the travelling carrier onto the movable rail from the first travelling path, a friction drive wheel disposed at a terminal end of the first travelling path and a friction drive wheel on the movable rail are used, and as drive means for transferring the travelling carrier onto the second travelling path from the movable rail, a friction drive wheel disposed at the beginning of the second travelling path and the friction drive wheel on the movable rail are used.
As described above, in such a conventional type of travelling carrier delivery equipment, a friction drive wheel is necessary not only on the movable rail side but also on each travelling path side to which this movable rail is connected, and in addition, control of the friction drive wheel on each travelling path side is also necessary, so that the control system becomes complicated, and as a whole, the facilities cost becomes very high. Particularly, in travelling carrier delivery equipment for storage in which a number of storage rails for storing a number of travelling carriers are arranged parallel, and the movable rail traverses and is connectable to an arbitrary storage rail, the friction drive wheel must be provided for each of all storage rails, and this is not practicable in terms of the facilities cost. Of course, travelling carrier delivery equipment constituted so as to transfer a travelling carrier by pushing and pulling drive means on the movable rail side is also considered, however, in the case of equipment that handles travelling carriers with long entire lengths for carrying long objects, the stroke of a lock tool on the pushing and pulling drive means side that engages with a locked portion of the travelling carrier side also becomes longer according to the entire length of the travelling carrier, the pushing and pulling drive means becomes large in size and complicated, and this is still impractical.